Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: News and politics

  • 10 Years of Brexit

    I see that it’s been 10 years since a tiny majority of the citizens of the UK voted to leave the EU (51.89 per cent voted in favour of leaving the EU and 48.11 per cent voted to remain a member state). It was a referendum and the then Tory government had decided that a simple majority would be enough for the UK to pull the plug on EU membership. David Cameron, the then Prime Minister, resigned 24 hours later and walked away from the mess he had created.

    10 years on and Brexit continues to be a disaster for the UK. Enter “Brexit” into the Search field on this blog and you get three pages of tales of woe that it has caused.

    No, today is not a day to celebrate.

  • How Not To Win Friends And Influence People

    Dear lord above – we have people like Mr. Bessent with their hands on the levers of power? We’re doomed, I tell you, doomed…

    US treasury chief urged Trump not to host ‘Mr Bean on crack’ Zelenskyy, book says | Trump administration | The Guardian

  • The Oligarchic Endgame Theory

    An interesting article in today’s Guardian from Ingrid Robeyns – a Belgian-Dutch economist and philosopher. In it she argues that extreme wealth (with Elon Musk as the most extreme example) is damaging to wider society. At one point she writes:

    The ultimate danger is the so-called oligarchic endgame theory, whereby power is concentrated among the super-rich. Governments, captured by the richest, then do everything to protect the privileges of this group and its supporters. Democracy itself is at risk if the rigid social hierarchy implied by this concentration of power among the wealthiest comes to pass.

    It seems to me that the “so-called oligarchic endgame theory” is no longer a theory, but a cold hard fact..

  • RIP Marjane

    Marjane Satrapi has died. We have lost an eloquent voice against the oppression in Iran. In this Guardian article about her, take a moment to click on her image of the Revolutionary Guards. Notice how their eyes are underlined blood-red. That is what is so chilling and so telling about her showing of the world in which she lived.

  • DigiD – A Last Minute Reprieve?

    Here in the Netherlands, DigiD is the online identity management system used by millions of us in our interactions with the government, local councils, hospitals and many other organisations such as pension funds and insurers. It acts as a digital passport by which we can prove our identity to service providers.

    DigiD is managed by the Dutch government organisation Logius, part of the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. The company Solvinity provides the infrastructure platform that DigiD runs on, which is hosted in a government data centre.

    It became known that Solvinity might be acquired by the American company Kyndryl, which led to questions being asked about digital sovereignty.

    We have already seen the Trump Administration force American software service suppliers to cut off their services from members of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and this week it emerged that sanctions have been imposed on European officials who enforce the European Digital Services Act.

    So there is a very real danger that were DigiD to fall into American hands, we could be held hostage at the whim of Washington. The current Administration is no friend to Europe.

    Thankfully, the State Secretary for Economic Affairs and Climate Policy announced on Tuesday, 26 May that the acquisition of Solvinity by Kyndryl will not be permitted to proceed. This was stated in the parliamentary letter regarding the investment screening decision on Solvinity.

    And, naturally, the Trump Administration is not happy about this – the US Ambassador here has already consulted Washington and criticised the ban.

    I suspect that we haven’t seen the end of this saga.

  • RIP Jesse Jackson

    Robert Reich has reposted Jesse Jackson’s speech to the Democratic National Convention in 1988.

    Read it and weep. We have lost a giant who sought to unite us. The loudest voices in politics today are those that seek to divide us.

  • RIP Carlos Hernández

    His last words.

  • Bless You Michael…

    You’re keeping us sane, even if it is at the cost of your own sanity…

    Honestly – how is it that no-one dares speak the truth – Trump is exhibiting all the signs of dementia…

  • Be Afraid…

    …be very afraid.

    I’ve read Nick Cohen’s journalism for years and always found him to be very perceptive about politics and society. So I thought I’d watch his interview of, and discussion with, Claire Berlinski.

    It started out being interesting, but by the end it was both interesting and downright scary…

  • Naked Propaganda

    The White House Administration has no shame whatsoever. Now they are publishing digitally altered images as propaganda.

    As a friend remarked to me: “They really are at the other end of the spectrum of humanity/decency/truth/integrity/courtesy….. Name any value that we would embrace, and they trample all over it.”

    Something is rotten in the USA, and it isn’t those who demonstrate against Trump’s paramilitary force aka ICE.

  • “Peace in Our Time”?

    I see that Trump has declared that a “framework for a deal over Greenland” has been reached following a conversation with NATO chief Mark Rutte.

    Well, pardon my scepticism, but I fear that Rutte is simply a modern-day Neville Chamberlain waving a piece of paper and shouting “Peace in our time”.

    What NATO has to do with questions about the sovereignty of Greenland I have no idea. I note that Rutte said that the question never came up in his conversation with Trump. Ah, so nobody spoke about the elephant in the room, eh, Mark?

    Fasten your seatbelts – this is not going to end well.

    Addendum: As usual, John Crace nails it.

  • Memo to Europe

    Robert Reich has just posted a memo to European leaders reminding them not to forget Neville Chamberlain.

    He’s quite right – you do not, and cannot, appease the tyrant Trump.

  • Jon Stewart Nails It

    This should be mandatory viewing for everyone.

  • Where Are America’s Leaders?

    Good question, Robert Reich…

  • Happy New Year?

    The view from my study window this morning:

    And walking in the woods later with Ollie, the dog:

    I returned to read that Trump has declared war on Venezuela – who will be next? Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of War…

    Oh well, Happy New Year to us all – what’s left of it…

  • Memo to Bari Weiss…

    …Learn what the Streisand Effect is before you censor something to appease Trump…

  • Thank You, Michael Spicer…

    …for fact-checking Trump’s stream of idiocy. It is a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing… that the world as we know it is done for. The inmates have taken over the asylum.

  • Sharp and Incisive?

    Yesterday, POLITICO’s Dasha Burns interviewed Donald Trump in the White House.

    This is the transcript of that interview.

    It is a disturbing read. Not because he gave sharp and incisive answers to the questions, quite the opposite, but because, in a rambling and often incoherent interview, he clearly harbours fantasies and grudges against those whom he perceives as his enemies.

    As a friend said, the most disturbing thing is that nothing/nobody is able to control him while he grows more extreme by the day, potentially touching the lives of every person on earth.

    Fasten your seatbelts, 2026 is not going to get any better for the world, and that includes the USA.

    Oh, and “NATO calls me Daddy”? – Well, Mark Rutte, that has come back to bite you, hasn’t it?

  • Let’s Cultivate Xenophobia

    I see that the US Administration thinks that:

    Europe faces “civilisational erasure” within the next two decades as a result of migration and EU integration, arguing in a policy document that the US must “cultivate resistance” within the continent to “Europe’s current trajectory”.

    I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the current US Administration would espouse the Great Replacement Theory along with its other dubious morals.

    I await the time when I’m deported back to India, because that was where my great-great-grandmother came from.

  • The BBC Bends The Knee

    The Reith Lectures is a series of lectures given each year by leading figures of the day. They are commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on BBC Radio. Named after the founder of the BBC, Lord Reith, they began in 1948 with lectures given by Bertrand Russell.

    This year’s lectures are being given by the Dutch popular historian and author Rutger Bregman, and he’s run into a spot of bother in his opening lecture.

    Bregman’s claim in the lecture that Trump was “the most openly corrupt president in American history” was removed from the lecture’s broadcast, after the BBC sought legal advice.

    As he says, it’s a clear case of self-censorship driven by fear of legal action from Trump:

    “The truth is that the sentence wasn’t inaccurate – it was removed because of legal fears. And that’s exactly the concern my lecture raises: when institutions start censoring themselves out of fear of those in power.”

    Trump’s tantrums and tactics are having a chilling effect on free speech in many areas. The BBC is just the latest organisation to bend the knee.

    Lord Reith will be spinning in his grave.

    Addendum: This episode of The News Agents covers this story, and also has Bregman giving his view on the situation: